One Hundred Years of Flight USAF Chronology ... - The Air University

1981
1981
January–June: Operating from Corpus Christi, Texas, and Little Rock,
Arkansas, C–130s delivered 500 tons of arms, ammunition, helicopters,
and other war materiel to El Salvador to help the government
combat leftist guerrillas.
January 11: The Boeing Company delivered the first USAF air-launched
cruise missiles to the 416th Bombardment Wing at Griffiss Air Force
Base, New York. Capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to a target
1,500 miles away, the new missiles contained a terrain-contour-matching
system that allows extremely low-altitude flight to avoid detection by
enemy radar.
January 18–25: Two C–9 Nightingales transported 52 Americans held by
Iran for 444 days from Tehran to Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany. After
four days at the USAF hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, the former
hostages returned to the United States on a VC–137.
March 17: McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company delivered the first KC–10A
Extender tanker/cargo aircraft to Strategic Air Command. Substantially
larger than the KC–135 tanker/cargo aircraft, the Extender not
only could carry more fuel and cargo, but also could refuel more types
of aircraft, including other KC–10s.
The primary mission of the KC–10A Extender was aerial refueling, but it also carried
cargo and passengers.
April 12: John W. Young and Capt. Robert L. Crippen, United States Navy,
flew the Columbia into space—the first space shuttle to do so.
Launched like a rocket, the shuttle landed like an airplane and could
be flown again.
May 2: An airborne laser destroyed an aerial target for the first time when the
Airborne Laser Laboratory (ALL), a modified KC–135 aircraft armed
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